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News Bytes By Michael Conry

Contents: Linux Links Conferences and Events News in General Distro News Software and Product News

Selected and formatted by Michael Conry

Submitters, send your News Bytes items in PLAIN TEXT format. Other formats may be rejected without reading. You have been warned! A one- or two-paragraph summary plus URL gets you a better announcement than an entire press release. Submit items to gazette@ssc.com

May 2003 Linux Journal

All articles older than three months are available for public reading at http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine.php. Recent articles are available on-line for subscribers only at http://interactive.linuxjournal.com/.

• Implementing a scroller in SDL graphics
• Packet filtering with Linux
• A short Ximian Evolution installation guide
• GWorkspace, the GNUstep Workspace Manager
• Case Study: Open Source Content Management Systems Make E-commerce Websites Affordable
• GUI Programming with GTK
• Concurrent programming - Message queues (2)

Some tips from Linux Journal on experimenting with the 2.5 kernel.

Linux Journal report on LinuxWorld Ireland 2003.

Building a Linux Media Jukebox to handle digital photos, audio, video, DVD and TV.

Massachusetts-based Open-Pc founder/CEO Morgan Lim discusses the business he has built around Linux.

Fujitsu preps Linux-based robot. It is based on a real-time Linux running on a 700MHz Pentium III.

Some links highlighted by Linux Today:

• Two articles on Linux RPG's.
• New version of The Infrared-HOWTO released.
• Reasoning your way to Linux.
• Improving Linux performance in application development
• Linux tackles SARS virus.
• Review of the Sharp Zaurus SL-5600 Linux-powered PDA.

Managing Linux releases for large numbers of installations.

Keith Parkansky's linux tips website www.aboutdebian.com has a series of "hands on" walk-throughs to help Linux beginners go from the basics to server and firewall setups while doing some fun things (like killing a telnet process to cut someone off) along the way. The material is particularly relevant to Debian users, but mostly it will be useful to anybody using GNU/Linux.

Richard Stallman on why he refused to speak at the eGovOS conference.

Using Free (Open Source) Software in a Grassroots Organisation. Reports on the use of Linux at the Low-Income Networking and Communicaitons Project of the Welfare Law Center.

Listings courtesy Linux Journal. See LJ's Events page for the latest goings-on.

Penguicon	May 2-4, 2003 Warren, MI http://penguicon.sourceforge.net/
USENIX First International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys)	May 5-8, 2003 San Francisco, CA http://www.usenix.org/events/
Linux Clusters Workshop in France	May 12-16, 2003 IBM Montpellier Laboratory http://www.linuxclustersinstitute.org
Third Open Source Content Management Conference	May 28-30, 2003 Cambridge, MA http://www.oscom.org
CeBIT America	June 18-20, 2003 New York, NY http://www.cebit-america.com/
ClusterWorld Conference and Expo	June 24-26, 2003 San Jose, CA http://www.clusterworldexpo.com
O'Reilly Open Source Convention	July 7-11, 2003 Portland, OR http://conferences.oreilly.com/
12th USENIX Security Symposium	August 4-8, 2003 Washington, DC http://www.usenix.org/events/
HP World	August 11-15, 2003 Atlanta, GA http://www.hpworld.com
LinuxWorld UK	September 3-4, 2003 Birmingham, United Kingdom http://www.linuxworld2003.co.uk
Linux Lunacy Brought to you by Linux Journal and Geek Cruises!	September 13-20, 2003 Alaska's Inside Passage http://www.geekcruises.com/home/ll3_home.html
Software Development Conference & Expo	September 15-19, 2003 Boston, MA http://www.sdexpo.com
PC Expo	September 16-18, 2003 New York, NY http://www.techxny.com/pcexpo_techxny.cfm
COMDEX Canada	September 16-18, 2003 Toronto, Ontario http://www.comdex.com/canada/
IDUG 2003 - Europe	October 7-10, 2003 Nice, France http://www.idug.org
LISA (17th USENIX Systems Administration Conference)	October 26-30, 2003 San Diego, CA http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa03/
HiverCon 2003	November 6-7, 2003 Dublin, Ireland http://www.hivercon.com/
COMDEX Fall	November 17-21, 2003 Las Vegas, NV http://www.comdex.com/fall2003/

Linux Test Project

Eventide

Eventide Inc., a producer of digital logging technology, have created a Linux-based digital logging and archiving system capitalising on the stability and reliablility of GNU/Linux. Such reliability is crucial in the public safety marketplace during mission critical situations.

The specifications of the Eventide VR778 digital logging and archiving system are available in pdf format. Eventide claims that the VR778 is the first digital logger to use the Linux O/S. This enables Eventide to provide a highly sophisticated digital system with no licensing requirements and an O/S that does not carry any other applications overhead "like many other Microsoft server based systems".

Anti-Spam Task Force Established by ActiveState

ActiveState Corp., a producer of email content filtering software, has announced the creation of an internal blue ribbon team comprised of the world's foremost anti-spam researchers. The Task Force members include: Dr. John Graham Cumming, creator of the popular open source Perl-based Bayesian mail filtering program, POPfile; Tim Peters, creator of SpamBayes, a Python-based open source Bayesian email classifier; Jason Rennie of MIT's Artificial Intelligence lab and creator of the open source tool, ifile, an automated email classification system; and Gary Robinson, an innovator in collaborative filtering. The Task Force is focusing on anti-spam issues affecting the enterprise, and is led by ActiveState's Director of Development, Jesse Dougherty.

The Anti-spam Task Force is focusing on several technical initiatives to optimize enterprise email messaging, including:

• Developing "next generation" methods for analyzing email content to more accurately distinguish between desirable and undesirable email
• Pioneering the development of non-spam gateway email filtering features to enhance organizational productivity
• Identifying and facilitating collaboration within the messaging industry to implement standards and email policies

Ark

Ark Linux H20: Simple and (Nearly) Complete.

Knoppix

Knoppix 3.2 has been released

Linux From Scratch

The latest version of LFS (4.1) will be available in printed-book form. The book will be available with or without companion CDRom from CheapBytes.

When you have your LFS 4.1 system up and running, you can get stuck into BLFS (Beyond LFS) which has just been updated to version 1.0.

Lindows

LindowsOS 3.0 Review.

Mandrake

Mandrake Linux releases 9.1.. This relese has been reviewed at OSNews (links courtesy Linux Today).

PCQLinux

NewsForge reports on PCQLinux. An Indian monthly magazine, PCQuest, has released its own variant Linux distribution based on Red Hat Linux 8.0.

Peanut

Moving to Peanut Linux.

Slackware

Slackware 9.0 has been released. Check out the ChangeLog to see what's new.

This release has been reviewed at TinyMinds.org, while OSNews debunks some myths surrounding the distribution (courtesy Linux Today).

UnitedLinux

UnitedLinux has announced that its four founding partner companies will offer special support programs and discounts to ISV participants in the Oracle's Unbreakable Linux Partner Initiative.

Yellow Dog

Yellow Dog Linux 3.0 Review.

Phoenix Rises From Ashes As Firbird

The name of the Mozilla spinoff browser Phoenix has been changed to Firebird.

Kerio Adds SpamAssassin to Latest Mail Server Release

Kerio Technologies, a security solutions software developer has launched the new version of its multi-platform corporate messaging solution, Kerio MailServer 5.6 with augmented anti-spam protection. Existing anti-spam tools have been enriched by the award-winning spam detection technology: SpamAssassin.

Kerio has also formed a partnership with Sophos to fight viruses in emails.

CourseForum/ProjectForum 2.1

CourseForum Technologies has announced the availability of both CourseForum 2.1 and ProjectForum 2.1. These web-based applications are intended to bring enhanced interaction, coordination and communication to online or face-to-face courses, student groups, workgroup projects, business teams, and corporate intranets. CourseForum and ProjectForum can be hosted on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. Users need only a standard web browser.

iConductor Goes Shareware

The iConductor Server Module designed to simplify the development of rules-based web applications on the Apache server is now available as shareware, including for the Apache Version 2.0. iConductor's creator, Farpointer Technologies, has changed its distribution model to allow unrestricted distribution of the iConductor module for non-commercial purposes. The target market is Linux-based Apache server users.

Other software

Mick is LG's News Bytes Editor.

Born some time ago in Ireland, Michael is currently working on a PhD thesis in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College Dublin. The topic of this work is the use of Lamb waves in nondestructive testing. GNU/Linux has been very useful in this work, and Michael has a strong interest in applying free software solutions to other problems in engineering. When his thesis is completed, Michael plans to take a long walk.